I purchased one of them, intending to send it to England,
but it perished for want of proper nourishment.
The latitude of these tents was 53 degrees 12 minutes 46 seconds North,
and longitude by chronometers 103 degrees 13 minutes 10 seconds West. On
the 5th of April we set out for the hunting tent by our former track and
arrived there in the evening.
As the increasing warmth of the weather had threatened to interrupt
communication by removing the ice orders had been sent from Cumberland
House to the people at the tent to quit it without delay, which we did on
the 7th. Some altitudes of the Aurora Borealis were obtained.
We had a fine view at sunrise of the Basquiau Hill, skirting half the
horizon with its white sides chequered by forests of pine. It is seen
from Pine Island Lake at the distance of fifty miles and cannot therefore
be less than three-fourths of a mile in perpendicular height; probably
the greatest elevation between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky
Mountains.
A small stream runs near the hunting tent, strongly impregnated with
salt. There are several salt springs about it which are not frozen during
the winter.
The surface of the snow, thawing in the sun and freezing at night, had
become a strong crust which sometimes gave way in a circle round our
feet, immersing us in the soft snow beneath. The people were afflicted
with snow blindness, a kind of ophthalmia occasioned by the reflection of
the sun's rays in the spring.
The miseries endured during the first journey of this nature are so great
that nothing could induce the sufferer to undertake a second while under
the influence of present pain. He feels his frame crushed by
unaccountable pressure, he drags a galling and stubborn weight at his
feet, and his track is marked with blood. The dazzling scene around him
affords no rest to his eye, no object to divert his attention from his
own agonising sensations. When he arises from sleep half his body seems
dead till quickened into feeling by the irritation of his sores. But
fortunately for him no evil makes an impression so evanescent as pain. It
cannot be wholly banished nor recalled by the force of reality by any act
of the mind, either to affect our determinations or to sympathise with
another. The traveller soon forgets his sufferings and at every future
journey their recurrence is attended with diminished acuteness.
It was not before the 10th or 12th of April that the return of the swans,
geese, and ducks gave certain indications of the advance of spring. The
juice of the maple-tree began to flow and the women repaired to the woods
for the purpose of collecting it.
